The agony of opioid withdrawal -- and what doctors should tell patients about it | Travis Rieder

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2018

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The United States accounts for five percent of the world's population but consumes almost 70 percent of the total global opioid supply, creating an epidemic that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths each year. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? In this personal talk, Travis Rieder recounts the painful, often-hidden struggle of opioid withdrawal and reveals how doctors who are quick to prescribe (and overprescribe) opioids aren't equipped with the tools to eventually get people off the meds.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features Bioethesis Travis Reader, recorded live at TEDxMitt Atlantic 2017.
0:08.8	How much pain medication are you taking?
0:12.3	That was the very routine question that changed my life.
0:16.2	It was July 2015, about two months after I had nearly lost my foot in a serious motorcycle accident.
0:22.6	So I was back in my orthopedic surgeon's office for yet another follow-up appointment.
0:27.8	I looked at my wife, Sadia. We did some calculating.
0:31.5	About 115 milligrams oxycodone, I responded, maybe more.
0:36.8	I was nonchalant, having given this information to many doctors
0:41.0	many times before, but this time was different. My doctor turned serious and he looked at me and
0:47.7	said, Travis, that's a lot of opioids. You need to think about getting off the meds now. In two months of escalating prescriptions,
0:55.8	this was the first time that anyone had expressed concern.
0:59.7	Indeed, this was the first real conversation I'd had about my opioid therapy, period.
1:04.7	I had been given no warnings, no counseling, no plan,
1:10.1	just lots and lots of prescriptions. What happened next really came to
1:15.6	define my entire experience of medical trauma. I was given what I now know is a much too
1:21.8	aggressive tapering regimen, according to which I divided my medication into four doses,
1:27.4	dropping one each week over the course of the month.
1:30.8	The result is that I was launched into acute opioid withdrawal. The result, put another way, was hell.
1:41.6	The early stages of withdrawal feel a lot like a bad case of the flu.
1:47.2	I became nauseated, lost my appetite.
1:50.8	I ached everywhere, had increased pain in my rather mangled foot.
1:56.3	I developed trouble sleeping due to a general feeling of restlessness.
	...

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